Posted on May 21, 2008 by Matthias Ebner in - Review
A number of my students formerly studied the Suzuki method, though they have now moved well beyond it. I have some Suzuki background myself, and so to illustrate a point one day, I asked one of these students to play Perpetual Motion for me in his lesson. Though this particular student was quite advanced at the time, his Perpetual Motion was shockingly sloppy. Due to this, I decided that all of my students should have to review and 'pass' all of the Suzuki repertoire from books 1-10. I made up a checklist with all of the pieces, and at every lesson they must perform a minimum of one piece from the list. If it is played very well, I check the piece off.
It came as quite a shock to many of the students how much difficultly they had to pass out of book one, because the standard of playing that I expected was quite high. By book two, they had begun to listen carefully to their playing, expect a higher level of mastery from themselves, and give more thought to what elements go into a high level performance. From there they needed much less guidance from me and were able to pass through the books more rapidly. (I use the term rapidly in a relative manner. This whole process still took a long time, especially for those students who only prepared one or two pieces for each lesson.)
I found this review process to be so successful that I have repeated it with many groups of students over the years, both those who studied the Suzuki method as children and those who didn't. Below I have pasted the "Complete Repertoire Review Guidelines" that I hand out to every student when they embark upon this project. Feel free to copy and paste it for your own use.
The Suzuki repertoire is full of beautiful pieces that employ nearly every element of cello technique and musicianship that we will ever need to master on our instruments. For that reason, I require that all of my students revisit the Suzuki books and perform every piece for me at their lessons to demonstrate the high level of mastery that they have achieved.
In order to let you know what I will be expecting from your performance of the review repertoire and what will be required to get a piece checked off, I have compiled this guide for Book 1 review, though many of the ideas will transfer to the later books as well.
In general, I am looking for:
-Good tone (This is my highest priority!)
-Physical ease, relaxation, and a sense of how your physical motions influence the sound (Elegant, fluid movements get an elegant, fluid sound. Choppy, jerky, tense movements get a choppy, jerky, tense sound.)
-Good intonation
-Understanding of appropriate style of the piece (For book one this does not necessarily mean that you need to think long and hard about the phrasing. Most of the pieces are simple folk tunes, not profound art music. Don't complicate them, but do think about clean articulations and appropriate bow strokes.)
More specific examples from book 1:
-Twinkle Variations- For all the variations except the theme, just thinking about the above list will be perfect. For the theme of course you also need to have beautiful vibrato and super smooth bow changes. (Try moving your body in the opposite direction from the bow for most of the note and then with the bow at the end of the note.)
-French Folk Song- This one needs continuous vibrato and long lines.
-For the next several pieces think about bow distribution and also check the music for where it suggests you use tunnels (leaving fingers down). You might choose not to do some of them, so that your vibrato can be balanced, but the economy of motion idea is worth considering.
-Rigadoon, Minuet in C, Minuet 2- This is officially Baroque music (Bach and his contemporaries). That means that legato is out and a beautiful, light, ringing brush stroke is in (i.e. grab and release). Experiment with putting your endpin in and holding the bow a few inches further up on the stick to get in the spirit of things. The hierarchy of beats is also very important in Baroque music. In 4/4 time (Rigadoon) the 1st beat is the most important, 3rd beat is second most important, and 2nd and 4th are not very important at all. In the minuets there is a general feeling of heavy, light, light (beats 1,2, and 3), but of course they all need to ring beautifully and even the heavy beat is extremely elegant.